124 New Toek at the World's Columbian ExpositioNo 



Of those tliat rose with steel and fell with gold, 

 The great republics of the ancient days. 



A touch of selfish greed, 

 The taint of luxury in social health. 

 The hates of class or creed. 

 The lure in politics to civic gnUt 

 Might sap thei stately home the fathers built 

 And take the household spirit as by stealth; 



And in some coming time 

 A generation might arouse in fear 

 And sense of loss and crime, 

 To find the new world faith and feeling dead 

 The old world's standards ruling in their stead. 

 And nothing but another Europe here ! 



Due honor to the lands 

 From which we sprung; all hail the ancient fame 

 Of kindred hearts and hands! 

 But we began with all that they had won, 

 A counsel of perfection calls us on; 

 To do no more than they have done were shame. 



'Twere better far, I hold, 

 To see the Iroquois supreme once more 

 Among the forests old. 

 From hill-girt Hudson's current broad and slow 

 To where 'twixt Erie and Ontario 

 Leaps green Niagara with a giant's roar; 



To see the paths pursued 

 By commerce with her flying charioteers 

 Tangled with solitude. 

 The Indian traU uncoil among the trees, 

 The council runner's torch against the breeze 

 Its signal fling — "the smoke that disappears;" 



To have the wigwam rise 

 By summer-haunted Horicon so fair; 

 Fruit blooms and grain-gold dies 

 Fade from the shadows in Cayuga's tide, 

 The vineyards fall on Keuka's sun beat side. 

 The mill-crowned cliffs of Genesee made bare. 



'Twere better far desire 

 To see Manhattan's self laid desolate. 



